RE: reports from sites vs. log analysis

From: L. Mark Stone <LMStone_at_tradeline.net>
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 1999 10:43:34 -0500 (CDT)

BRYCE ISHAM WROTE:
>In the recent past, we have bought banner advertising on
>magazine web sites. I have found that the number of weekly
>click-throughs these web sites report to us is always twice
>the number of click-throughs (top referring sites/top
>referring URLs) that our WebTrends log analysis reports
>show.

FWIW, we recently replaced WebTrends with our own in-house
solution.

WebTrends counts a page as viewed when all of the HTML for
that page is loaded.

If the user abandons the page after all of the HTML is
loaded but before all of the ads are loaded, then WebTrends
will count the page as viewed.

If the ads on that same page are served by a third-party ad
server (eg. DoubleClick), and the user abandons the page
before the ads are served, then the third-party ad server
will report a higher click-through rate than the site on
which the ad appears.

It's not clear who is serving the ads, but as the site on
which the ad is coded is reporting higher click throughs
than the site serving the ad, most likely you are seeing the
effects of cacheing.

Best regards,
L. Mark Stone
Director, Special Projects
Internet Tradeline, Inc.
http://www.tradeline.net (Corporate)
http://www.pointshop.com (Shopping)

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Received on Wed Aug 04 1999 - 15:51:58 CDT